Ice Phoenix

Ranstitha was a beautiful city. Glass domes rotated slowly against a sand-burnished background. Wacky and wonderful sculptures combined with living plants decorated the streets in a perfect union of harmony, and sleek, hi-tech vehicles zoomed by on various levels of the city. The streets were paved with a light mineral that added to its pristine beauty. Meandering throughout the city was an artificial river around twenty-metres wide. The water was clear and calm, a perfect glass for the strange and fascinating species that inhabited it.

In the far distance, the distinct shapes of three moons cast a blue and purple haze across the sky. The sun’s white light retreated as it gave way to the encroaching dusk.

The city heaved with life. People dressed in some of the most outrageous, elegant, and simplest costumes walked along the many bridges that crossed the river, while others glided effortlessly on the walkways at varying speeds.

Terrana gazed bleakly at this world from her bedroom window. The apartment building she was in resembled the coiled shell of a snail, and it overlooked the river. Her left eye itched from days of crying, and she tried to ease the irritation by blinking. She nestled in the wide frame of the window, staring at the ships hovering in the sky, their sails flapping idly in the wind.

Terrana raised a thin, bony hand to the glass, running her fingers across. Through the transparent bandages, she could see that her skin was still raw. She had been told that the pigmentation would return, but she couldn’t care less. Not even the hairless brows or patchy face could distract her from the real pain inside her.

It hurt so much — like someone had stabbed her with a knife and was twisting it. Her family was gone. She wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around her mother and complain about some trivial thing Archie had done. Or swing on the hammock with her dad. Or ... her throat tightened ... to drop a crab on Archie while he was sleeping. Most of all, she wished she could tell them she loved them. But she had been robbed of that chance. Her vision clouded as a single tear leaked from her eye. She had tasted it so many times that she knew what it would taste like. It was saltier than the saltiest ocean — and it was bitter.

The people on this planet would not allow her to return to her world to say her final goodbyes. But truth be told, she didn’t know whether she was strong enough to anyway. Returning home would be like reliving the events of that night and dealing with the harsh truth that her parents and brother were dead.

Suicide had crossed her mind. She even attempted it, although her reasons for doing so had been different to what the people in the hospital had thought. Some little part of her had hoped that she was trapped in a nightmare, and so she held her breath to see whether she would wake up. Two minutes later, her hospital room was swarming with doctors and flying bots trying to force oxygen into her lungs.

“I need to wake up,” she had cried. “I need to return home!” But they only carted her to the sleep-gen cylinder and sealed her in. ”I hate you all!” she had screamed. ”You have no right to keep me here!”

She knew they had tried everything. They even brought in a grief counsellor to try to talk to her about her feelings, but he was an alien, and there was no way he could have understood her. It never occurred to her that, perhaps, she was the alien.

“You’re not dreaming,” the counsellor had said, after losing patience with her. “Your mind would have to be twisted if you simply dreamt up this whole situation. Your parents are really dead and your brother — he sacrificed his life for you! Do you want to return to your world and see the remains of your house? The graves of your family? Because that’s the only thing left for you now.”

Terrana had screamed. Unfortunately for the counsellor, a little bald man with a long chin, Baneyon had walked in at that very moment and overheard everything. He grabbed the counsellor by the collar with one hand and dragged him from the room. It was the last time she ever saw the counsellor.

But what he had said was true. There was nothing left for her back home, and it wasn’t because she didn’t have any relatives, even though she didn’t. And it wasn’t because she couldn’t move in with family friends — she could. They would have accepted her gladly. It was because the most important companion in her life, aside from her family, had abandoned her. Puddy. No matter where she was, how far she travelled, how long she dreamed, she had always been able to feel him. He had always been there with her. Even on the night of the fire, she had felt him, anxious and afraid.

But she couldn’t feel him anymore. And that was the knife inside her. The disorientation, the disbelief, the hurt, and the emptiness stemmed from the loss of her family. But the knife, created when Puddy had deliberately severed the connection between them, hurt her physically. It grounded her to this reality, and she knew she wasn’t dreaming.

It took a while before she could accept it. She didn’t speak, she didn’t look at anyone, and she didn’t eat. For days she stared blankly into space, struggling silently with her grief. The aliens worried and fretted over her, trying to encourage her to speak, to eat, to react. But they were all so different that she couldn’t respond to them. In fact, their presence made her retreat into herself even more.

And then one day Baneyon had come into her room and sat next to her. He cradled her head to his chest and whispered softly, “You can cry, you know. If it’s hurting you, just let it come out. No one person could keep all that grief in there without exploding.”

It had started with a single tear, followed by a sob. Her shoulders shook, and suddenly she was clinging to Baneyon like a baby, wailing her soul out. It had been the first breakthrough. She hadn’t spoken for days after that but, to her annoyance, he did. She began to realise he wasn’t going to give up on her.

He started talking about his world.

“This planet is Pophusia. It’s one of the ten inhabited planets that exist in Sector Three. A sector is a cluster of stars and planets that exists in one part of Dartkala or the In-Between. You may know it as Space. In total there are thirteen sectors that we know of. Your planet, Earth, is part of Sector Thirteen.”

He occasionally paused to see whether she was listening but, as usual, she kept her expression blank.

“A very long time ago, ten sectors came together to form the United Worlds of the In-Between. Their purpose was to maintain peace throughout Dartkala and encourage understanding between the different races. Sector Thirteen, including your planet, is not part of this union, and the knowledge of our existence to any race in your sector is strictly forbidden.

“Terrana, there is something you possess which sets you apart from the people in your world. It’s the reason you’re here. You possess something called qi. It is an energy that exists throughout the universe but to many people in UWIB, it’s like blood — a part of our bodies that gives us very special abilities.”

He reached out and stroked the exposed part of her face.

“It allowed you to travel to us, to see us every night in your dreams. It is an ability that does not belong in Sector Thirteen, and UWIB cannot risk your people discovering our existence through you. Not yet.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that human beings were classified as BDI, a race consumed with avarice, narcissism, violence and destruction. In short, BDI stood for Body of Dangerous Individuals or by its more common universal slang, Body of Dangerous Idiots. But he did tell her something else so that she wouldn’t feel so alone.

“There’re people in your world who possess qi. But their abilities are very limited and none of them ever crossed the spatial barrier as you did.”

Terrana was listening, although she gave no indication of it. In a strange way, everything he had said made sense to her. A colourful bird with long tail feathers settled on the window ledge, hopping from one side to the other before stopping to stare at her through the glass. She tapped on the window in an attempt to scare it off and was surprised when it suddenly bared teeth.

She pulled her hand back and looked up at the ships sailing in the sky with their bright, red sails. They reminded her of Chinese Junks with majestic dragon wings, while others resembled galleons, powerful and deadly.

Puddy. Her thoughts couldn’t help but return to him. Why did he abandon her? Why did she feel he had cut out her heart? He had left her when she needed him the most. Why?

It started as a little ball of darkness festering in the pit of her stomach, spreading and contaminating every kind thought she once possessed. She found she was suddenly infused with newfound strength and determination. For the briefest moment, her eye turned black, and a dark liquid seeped out.

She relished her icy rage. It froze the pain inside her, made her forget about her life in and filled her with a burning desire to destroy everything in her path.

“Lunch is ready.”

The dark liquid retreated into her eye, and as quickly as it had appeared, the rage vanished. Baneyon knelt beside her.

“This time it’s really good. I roasted a kantakry bug fish with caramelised root vegetables. You would like it.”

Fish. That was different to the usual pills she swallowed. Its aroma drifted into the room and for the first time since leaving the hospital, Terrana felt hungry.

She couldn’t remain a ghost forever, crying about her family and Puddy. Neither could she return home. She had to adapt, to learn about this new world and the people who lived in it. And she would start today.

“Why is it that I can understand you?”